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Federal Trade Commission

Despite the fact that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began requiring affiliate disclosures in 2013, a new study conducted by researchers at Princeton University has found that very few influencers on YouTube and Pinterest are disclosing affiliate links.

In 2013, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ended its investigation into Google, but new documents reveal that FTC staffers believed the company engaged in behavior that hurt consumers and advertisers.

Has Google altered its algorithm to favor its own properties in vertical search results?

Numerous publishers which now find themselves competing with the search engine they rely on for valuable traffic have accused Google of doing just that. Some in the industry have even petitioned antitrust regulators to look into the matter.

In 1998, the United States Department of Justice and 20 states filed a lawsuit against Microsoft alleging that the software giant abused a monopoly position in the market to dominate the market for web browsers.

The stakes were high. If it lost, Microsoft could have been forced to break itself into two parts. And even though it eventually settled under more favorable terms, the case against Microsoft is arguably the defining moment in the company’s history.

In May 2000, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a number of guidelines designed to help companies stay in compliance with numerous consumer protection laws as they increased their presence on the then-nascent commercial internet.

The FTC’s Dot Com Disclosures (PDF) document largely explained how existing laws around advertising and disclosure applied in the context of the internet, and provided some specific examples.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has increasingly been taking a more active role in trying to make sure that online marketers aren’t harming consumers. That has meant, amongst other things, keeping a close eye on marketing taking place through social channels. You know, Kim Kardashian’s tweets.

Yesterday, the FTC issued a long-awaited staff report that “proposes a framework to balance the privacy interests of consumers with
innovation that relies on consumer information to develop beneficial new
products and services.“

How important is ‘network neutrality‘? In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission thinks it’s such a big deal that it’s willing to completely ignore court rulings and potentially even Congress in its altruistic effort to ‘protect consumers.‘

But in a rare example of thoughtful governmental restraint, Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, has determined that network neutrality may not be all that it’s cracked up to be.

Journalism, apparently, is in trouble. The once-dominant financiers of journalism — newspapers — are dying. And while some see hope in new media, the harsh reality is that journalism’s woes have less to do with distribution mediums and more to do with business models.

That’s because the kind of journalism that is threatened is expensive, and even online, there aren’t too many business models that can support it. So what should we do?

Sure, search and email are awesome and, when done right, are two of the most accountable forms of marketing around. But ask about other forms of online marketing and you’ll probably meet more marketers who aren’t producing ROI (or who aren’t even tracking it) than you will find marketers who are.

One of Google’s biggest goals seems to have little to do with dollars and cents. It’s a simple one: ‘do no evil‘ and it has been widely promoted for the simple fact that few billion-dollar corporations set such a goal.

Obviously, aiming to do no evil and actually doing no evil are two different things and Google has been criticized over a number of issues.